it was 3.30 in the morning …

… and I was on my way back from a midnight buffet somewhere. My autorickshaw was cruising along at a breakneck speed of sixty kmph. I say ‘breakneck’ because if the rick was to topple over due to a tiny, innocent bump on the fairly bumpy road, I would actually end up breaking my neck. There was an extremely arbit Kumar Sanu – Anuradha Paudwal duet (I think it was this one) blaring through the speakers with the singers competing with the insanely loud Jhankar Beats to get their point across – all I could hear was meeeooowww-dhish-tick-thak-thakka-dhish-tick-thak-thakka-weeoooooow. In short, life was good in the fast lane.

Our ‘mosam‘, so as to speak, was rudely interrupted by this bright red Skoda Octavia which whizzed past us with a whoosh sound. It passed by so close that my rick encountered turbulence in its wake and started wobbling dangerously. Given that it was a 6-lane highway and that there wasn’t a single car in sight, neither the driver nor I (me?) appreciated this unwelcome attempt at closeness. The car then gave a Left-turn indicator and turned right.

“Yeh chhokri log ko kayko gaadi chalaaneko dete hain, pata nahi saab (why they give cars to ladeez to drive, god only knows sir),” said the driver with a snarl on his face. I couldn’t really see his face because he was facing ahead, but I could definitely hear the snarl in his voice. I know – it was so sexist of him to generalize this, and it was so distinctly unfair to all those brilliant lady-drivers out there who ply our roads with deft skill on a daily basis without threatening other life forms. I would had protested vociferously, but it seemed pointless given the complete lack of a female audience/ rational audience.

We then saw the same Skoda parked a few metres ahead at the side of the road. I decided to do my bit towards registering my protest by peeking inside to glare as hard as I could at the driver. That was when I observed that the driver was, in fact, a girl. And that there was another girl sitting right next to her as well. What were the chances, eh?

For some reason, this reminded me of that scene from Crash, that spectacular Oscar-winning movie from 2004. The scene had Ludacris and another black guy moaning about how prejudiced white people are towards black people and how badly they stereotype them (black guys, that is). And then the two of them … well, see the video. (Embedding unfortunately not allowed for this video).